Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Parenting doesn't end...

when the children move out on their own. Sometimes this is even more difficult than when the children are living under your roof.

My eldest, who is 20, recently moved to Tigard, OR after spending an eye-opening year in Bellevue, NE. In the last 12 months, she has taken a hiatus from college, moved to NE, married/divorced and moved to OR. She is working on finding her way and doing it on her terms. My husband and I understand this...we may not always agree with her decisions, but they are her decisions and we support her in them.

Now...my in-laws are another matter altogether when it comes to this issue. Case in point ~ just before their visit this past weekend, my FIL decided that he would call C to 'check' on her and to convince her to move to NC and stay with them because my MIL was beside herself with worry that C isn't safe. Believe me when I say C is safe. She is staying with friends who would do anything in the world to protect her...they are great friends. After my FIL spoke with C, I just happened to call her because I needed to verify some information and she was very upset when she answered. C informed me of the call and gave me some information that upset me tremendously. I was unsure what to do with this information and called my husband to give him a heads' up about it. We were to the point of calling the ILs and cancelling their visit. However upon reflection and a couple of glasses of wine, we decided to let the visit happen and see what would come of it.

There was a discussion with the ILs Saturday morning to get their side of the conversation. Their side of the discussion was different than hers, so we tried to put all of the information together to figure out what exactly was said. It turns out that there was a 'miscommunication' between C and her grandparents and we received the 'C-filtered' version of the conversation. She did say that my FIL was nagging her about moving/college/etc and we don't doubt that. We did explain to them that she needs to learn how to do for herself and that if we keep helping her, she's not going to learn how to do this. Not sure if that is going to happen, but we said what we needed to and we believe that they understand. Maybe...

I'm quite sure that this is not the end of the drama, however, at least my ILs know where we stand on the issue. It is my hope that they will accept her decisions and let her find her way.